At least, that's what Brian Ashcraft at Kotaku says about the pre-Tokyo Games Show press event held by Microsoft, where they did show some Halo:

Now, they are showing a Halo 3 trailer. Because, you know, the Japanese really love Halo. It's a new trailer! They showed the Japanese TV ad, too. The Halo 3 Xbox 360 will be open priced when the game goes on sale here.

Check the Kotaku story for their coverage of the event.

Gamasutra has a story up on some of the audio technology used to make Halo 3. Specifically, real time signal processing software by Waves, called Maxx.

The story contains a short quote from Marty "The Elder" O'Donnell.

Thanks to Anton P. Nym for the heads-up in the HBO forum.

A thread in 4chan claims to have a screencap from the endgame cinematic and summarizes the end of the game.

WARNING: The link may contain spoilers. Don't click it if you don't want to know what may, or may not, be the end of Halo 3.

Kotaku has the story that Yahoo will be hosting two new exclusive Halo 3 videos, Museum and Believe, this week.

Both will debut at 9 PM Pacific Time; Museum on Wednesday, and Believe on Friday. Looks like live action and commercial footage, rather than in-engine cutscene or gameplay.

MasterChief2829 pointed out a link to an eBay auction that claims to have the full retail Halo 3 package, including an unboxed shot.

It appears to be a PAL version of the game from Australia.

Cinema Blend Games has a series of pieces by Steve West they're calling their Halo 3 Primer. It covers:

• Multiplayer
• UNSC weapons
• Covenant weapons
• Equipment
• UNSC vehicles
• Covenant vehicles
• Characters
• Story
• Community
• Editions/Accessories

A lot of information there-- most of it not new, but it's nice to have it all in one place.

Jason "Gravemind" Goodman (also known as ShadowoftheVoid) has written up part one in a series on the history of medium-range weapons in the Halo series, this one focusing on the recent nerf of the Covenant Carbine between the Halo 3 beta and now.

TrackZero at Evil Avatar got to see a closed-door demonstration of two campaign levels from Halo 3. His verdict? It's a keeper if you like Halo, at least a rental if you don't.

It takes all the best of the series and kicks it up a notch. I never encountered any issues during gameplay at all to speak of. The single player campaign missions that I saw merely came off as a tease, as I wanted to grab the controller and play the whole time. The multiplayer is a large improvement over Halo 2 (which I wasn't a fan of) and hits a great balance that's sure to please people.

Read the full post for more details about Halo 3, as well as impressions of several other games.

Kotaku has the story that says that eighty-eight Best Buy locations have been chosen to open at midnight to sell Halo 3 on September 25. See Kotaku for the full story or click the thumbnail on the left for the complete list.

As soon as possible being, in this case, already. Francesca Reyes, Editor-in-Chief of Official Xbox Magazine, has already played through the entire Halo 3 single-player campaign, and her ten page review will hit the streets in the next edition of OXM, day and date with the game.

Technically nobody's supposed to say a word about the game, but GamesRadar managed to get her to say a few words about how she felt after she finished playing:

I think I was kind of in a state of shock for most of it, especially after I finished the campaign. I was happy, yes - but it didn't really hit me until I was back in San Francisco and eating a big bowl of ramen at some neighborhood joint. I sat there at the table with my bowl of ramen and a copy of Wired (the one with Master Chief on the cover which I bought for the flight home) - and I thought to myself: Wow. I can't believe I just did something that hundreds of thousands of people have been waiting years to do.

Thanks Major Silva for the heads-up in the HBO forum.

Hawty McBloggy compiled a list of top ten things to do while Xbox Live is down, (it's back up already) while GameDaily has a list of top ten things to do before Halo 3 comes out.

Just remember, this isn't really Halo news, just an amazing NBC simulation. The items range from the practical (sleeping) to the commercial (buy gamefuel) and from the sublime (live action oddball) to the ridiculous (live action teabagging).

Louis Wu posted up the former list, and Avateur pointed out the latter in the HBO forum.